I started this book several times and abandoned it when my attention lagged. In order to motivate me to read it, I chose it for one of my book clubs to read, and the consensus was that it had some shining moments, but for the most part, it felt rambling or unfocused. Perhaps a lot of it was over our head. The segments addressing the author's father's work with death row inmates were particularly strong in my opinion. However, maintaining focus to read other parts of this book often felt like having to hold your eyelids open in order to stay awake.

I know it is a romantic notion, but I do believe that there are times when a book finds its way to you at the moment you need it most. Such was the case with this book. I was granted an Advanced Reader's Copy from the publisher, Little, Brown, and Company a while ago, and events conspired to put this lower and lower on my pile. Time passed. In that time, my father also passed away.

As fate would have it- this book is about a specific way the author found to understand life, grief, and her community after the loss of her twin sisters, father and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina which devastated her hometown. She gathered a group of like-minded people to create a unique book club- The Existential Crisis Reading Group of those left behind in the aftermath of the storms. It's a book about finding answers in books and people. It's also a book about healing through big, universal ideas that span the course of history. It is smart, honest, literary, thoughtful and poignant. The subject matter was dealt with seriously, without platitudes or easy answers. I appreciated the gravitas that existed in the material, while the author was also able to infuse a sense of vibrancy still coursing through her.

I don't know if I would have resonated with the material if I read it before the passing of my father. There is a specific and unknowable experience that happens with the death of a parent that I realize now I could never have been prepared for, regardless of how deeply I studied the subject. It's experiential. Reading this book was a balm for my heart and my mind, as it brought the existential questions to the foreground, as her book club discussed them. For a bibliophile and a daughter, this was a magic combination to find in a book. I look forward to going back to this book from time to time as there is a lot there to contemplate.

Thanks to Little, Brown, and Company for the ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

This is definitely a book for book lovers. It is beautifully written and shows a deep love of books.

My apologies but I could not finish this book. I have enjoyed memoirs about books in the past (The End of Your Life Book Club, Dear Fahrenheit 451) but I found this one to be rather dry and quite philosophical, which I understand is the point - I just did not enjoy it very much.

Anne Gisleson's memoirs dealing with her father's death and her twin sister's suicides 18 months apart is quite a heavy read. Her husband had his own losses he was grieving through as he lost his partner and mother to his son very early in their marriage to cancer. Combine that with suffering through Hurricane Katrina and life's daily offerings, there is a LOT of pain in here.

Together with their friends (who had many pains, as well), Ann and her husband, Brad, start a book club, the ECRG in which they really delve deeply into the meaning of these books. I can attest that I did add several of those books to my TBR pile.

A book dealing with loss, comfort and healing. Not your basic summer beach read at all.

Thanks to Little, Brown and Company and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Anne Gisleson is a graceful and insightful writer, and I found this chronicle of her search for meaning eloquent and affecting. A year's worth of gatherings of Anne Gisleson's discussion group, the Existential Crisis Reading Group--nicknamed The Futilitarians--is the basis for her exploration of what it means to be alive: how to navigate the trivial and the tragic, honoring both without losing ourselves in either. New Orleans emerges as a vivid character in these connected essays, and the people who populate Gisleson's world seem to identify with the city's history and character, leaving me with an appreciation of a place I've felt little connection to in the past.

Death winds through the narrative in expected and surprising ways. Years after her youngest sisters' (separate) suicides, Gisleson is still haunted by their deaths. She's also re-evaluating her relationship with her father, who has recently died of leukemia. Then there's the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the death-penalty cases that her father and brother, both lawyers, have felt morally compelled to take on.

Gisleson is a smart and thoughtful essayist and she links the ECRG's monthly discussions naturally with personal stories that are both specific to her and universal in their humanity: the realization over time of how little we really know the people closest to us, the ways in which grief manifests or hides, and our unrelenting desire for connection to others.

One for angsty, bookish types. In 2012 Anne Gisleson, a New Orleans-based creative writing teacher, her husband, one of her sisters and some friends formed what they called an Existential Crisis Reading Group (which, for the record, I think would have been the better title for this book). Each month they got together to discuss their lives and their set readings – both expected and off-beat selections, everything from Kafka and Tolstoy to Kingsley Amis and Clarice Lispector – over wine and snacks.

One of their texts, Arthur Koestler’s The Act of Creation, proposed the helpful notion of the Trivial and Tragic Planes. The Trivial is where we live everyday, and the Tragic is where we’re transported when something awful happens. Gisleson had plenty of experience with the latter: not just the suicides of her younger twin sisters, a year and a half apart, and her father’s death from leukemia, but also the collective loss of Hurricane Katrina. She returns again and again to these sources of grief in her monthly chapters structured around the book group meetings, elegantly interweaving family stories and literary criticism.

I found the long quotes from the readings a little much – you probably shouldn’t pick this book up if you don’t have the least interest in philosophy and aren’t much troubled by life’s big questions – but in general this is a fascinating, personal look at what makes life worth living when it can be shattered any second. I particularly loved the chapter in which the book club members creatively re-enact the Stations of the Cross for Easter and the sections about her father’s pro bono work as an attorney for death row inmates at Angola prison. Sometimes it really is a matter of life and death.

Favorite passages:

“Generations of parents have put their children to bed in this house and even if I haven’t quite figured out the why and the how of living, others have found reasons to keep moving things forward. In quiet moments I can feel the collective push of these ghost-hands on my back, nudging me on.”

“As you get older all the bodies of your stillborn selves may pile up around you but every decision is also its own act of creation. That’s one of the miracles of the self—that we keep creating ourselves amid the personal carnage.”

“this is something many of us do intuitively, giving our woes more texture and universality through art.”

Josiah Royce, from “Doubting and Working”: “Doubt not because doubting is a good end, but because it is a good beginning. Doubt not for amusement, but as a matter of duty. Doubt not superficially, but with thoroughness. Doubt not flippantly, but with the deepest—it may be with the saddest—earnestness. Doubt as you would undergo a surgical operation, because it is necessary to thought-health.”

BROOKE’S REVIEW

Anne Gisleson’s The Futilitarians is a bibliophile’s dream memoir. It is a book that celebrates literature and friendship. Gisleson masterfully weaves sharing with readers about the life events that led up to the creation of the Existential Crisis Reading Group (ECRG), the readings themselves, and the events that happen during the year over which the book takes place. This all happens set against the rich landscape of post-Katrina New Orleans - a city that defines (at least to me) contemporary existentialism.

Those new to philosophy need not worry about feeling out of their depth while reading this book. Novices and experts alike will be able to enjoy this book and wrestle with the time we spent grappling between Koestler’s “Tragic and Trivial Planes.” The ECRG is as likely to discuss Epicurus as they are Chuck Palahnuiuk’s Fight Club. They only spend a brief session on the Ancient Greeks, with most of their focus being on the more recent Modernists and beyond.

As I alluded to above, a rich character in this story is the city itself - New Orleans. People who love this city will appreciate the time given to exploring the complexity of this region. Having lived in Baton Rouge before, during, and after Katrina myself, South Louisiana has a special place in my heart. It’s a place of unparalleled history, culture, food, and people. This book explores those layers and more. It allows readers to take a step back and ask universal questions about life. The only thing missing is that it left me sad realizing that I cannot join their merry band of questioners myself.

PRAISE

“This is a shattering and very important book - and will, if there is justice (and there must be justice), be considered one of the best books of this year. There is an ocean of hurt here, but Gisleson manages to sail through it and show us everything that’s beautiful about this sea of pain. If you love existential literature, or New Orleans, or your family, or are curious about the meaning of life, then you will find The Futilitarians to be an essential book."―Dave Eggers, New York Times bestselling author of The Circle and What is the What

"After Katrina, New Orleanians became experts in resilience. Anne Gisleson has captured that spirit poignantly in The Futilitarians, which explores how we can find meaning in our lives by struggling back from tragedies. Whether as communities or as individuals, she shows, we do it by holding hands and moving forward together."―Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and New York Times bestselling author of Steve Jobs and Einstein: His Life and Universe

"Boozy, brilliant, beautiful, tragic, and deeply affecting, The Futilitarians is my favorite memoir of the year.”
―Jami Attenberg, New York Times bestselling author of The Middlesteins

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

A memoir of friendship and literature chronicling a search for meaning and comfort in great books, and a beautiful path out of grief

Anne Gisleson had lost her twin sisters, had been forced to flee her home during Hurricane Katrina, and had witnessed cancer take her beloved father. Before she met her husband, Brad, he had suffered his own trauma, losing his partner and the mother of his son to cancer in her young thirties. “How do we keep moving forward,” Anne asks, “amid all this loss and threat?” The answer: “We do it together.”

Anne and Brad, in the midst of forging their happiness, found that their friends had been suffering their own losses and crises as well: loved ones gone, rocky marriages, tricky childrearing, jobs lost or gained, financial insecurities or unexpected windfalls. Together these resilient New Orleanians formed what they called the Existential Crisis Reading Group, jokingly dubbed “The Futilitarians.” From Epicurus to Tolstoy, from Cheever to Amis to Lispector, each month they read and talked about identity, parenting, love, mortality, and life in post-Katrina New Orleans, gatherings that increasingly fortified Anne and helped her blaze a trail out of her well-worn grief. Written with wisdom, soul, and a playful sense of humor, The Futilitarians is a guide to living curiously and fully, and a testament to the way that even from the toughest soil of sorrow, beauty and wonder can bloom.